UCI Grad, Writing on South-Central Teen, Sells 1st Novel

Jervey Tervalon, a June graduate of the UC Irvine Program in Writing, has sold the hardback and paperback rights of his first novel, "Understand This," to William Morrow/Avon Books.

Tervalon, who now lives in Pasadena, says his book is one of the few contemporary novels dealing with South-Central Los Angeles, where he grew up and taught high school for five years.

The novel's main character is an 18-year-old high school student who witnesses a shooting. He is not, however, a gang member.

Contrary to the media stereotype of the area, Tervalon says, "a lot of professionals live in South-Central L.A., and there are a lot of working-class, or middle-class, neighborhoods right next to the projects. What I'm trying to do is get some sort of portrayal of life in South-Central Los Angeles that isn't 'News at 11,' that isn't reduced to bad people and good people."

Tervalon, 33, describes his book as a "novel of voice and perspectives that portray a patchwork reality that, to me, represents more of what the complexities are of life in South-Central Los Angeles. So there is violence and cocaine, but there is also family and church, and there are mothers and fathers and people that are professional just as well as gang-bangers."

The 14-chapter book, he says, is told in the first-person, but a new "voice" assumes the narrative in each chapter.

Tervalon says he wrote "a really bad first draft" of the novel while teaching high school and rewrote it during his 16 months at UCI. The book is due out next fall.

Meanwhile, the writer has received a one-year screenwriting fellowship from the Disney Co. and is writing the screen adaptation of a novel for Disney's Hollywood Pictures division.

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UC Irvine faculty members Rob Kling, Spencer Olin and Mark Poster have received the Western History Assn.'s biennial award for "the most outstanding book published on the 20th Century American West."

"Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange County Since World War II," published in 1991 by University of California Press, includes 10 original interdisciplinary essays by the three editors and other university scholars.

The award was recently presented at the Western History Assn.'s annual meeting held this year at Yale University, which is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its distinguished Western Americana collection.

Author Reading. Australian author Thomas Keneally will read from, discuss and sign his books--"Women of the Inner Sea," "Schindler's List" and "Now and Time to Be in Ireland"--at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Upchurch-Brown Booksellers, 384 Forest Ave., Laguna Beach.